HCG Diet - 1 Week Results

If you want an overview of the HCG Diet, Click Here.

Okay, so I started the diet last Tuesday, but the first two days were Load Days, so they don't really count as "diet days". I did go to the clinic for my weight and measurements (and to sort out some questions and concerns) on Monday, which works out to the 5th morning of the actual very low calorie diet (VLCD as known in the small, but formidable HCGers world).

First of all, my load days. Well, I could have done better, but I didn't plan it as well the first day. I would highly recommend planning out your load days to get maximum fat AND enjoyment out of it. That includes planning where to eat, if you are eating out. The second day was great! I should mention that my husband started the HCG diet with me. He's only got a little bit to lose (love handles and whatnot), but he jumped in nonetheless.

Anyway, we went to a little breakfast place and had a bacon, egg and cheese croissant with a latte made with half and half instead of milk. We had Thai food, including deep fried curry puffs, pad thai, coconut soup and followed with Thai donuts (deep fried fingers of dough dipped in condensed milk topped with peanuts). We also had Italian. Fettuccine Alfredo with extra Alfredo sauce, cheese cake with whipped cream, and of course we had some bread rolls dipped in oil.

I learned to do the injections and gave them to myself each day. After two days of that kind of eating and the HCG injections, I gained a whopping .4 pounds. That's right, point-four pounds. Not even half a pound. I was stunned. Though I've seen a number of people mention that they lost weight even. Crazy.

So Day 1 of the VLCD was a little rough. I was hungry and I had a headache most of the afternoon and evening. Greaaaaaat. Though I've heard that this can happen. It wasn't awful. It was just...ugh.

The next day made it all worthwhile as I had lost 4.4 pounds. Bam! I didn't mind being hungry after that.

Each day I lost a little more, but I still felt a little hungry. I have talked to LOTS of friends who are on this diet as well, and I believe that the fact that I'm still a little hungry is unusual. Maybe I didn't load properly? Possibly I should have loaded for a week. Dr. Simeons talks about that because I generally eat pretty healthy. Or it could have to do with the fact that I started this program a week before my cycle. Dr. Simeons states that the BEST time to do this diet is to start the day after you're done. So that could be it. Oh well. Still, I did well:



Weight Lost: 7.8 Pounds
Inches Lost: 3.5" (measured chest, waist, hips, L-thigh, R-arm) Not bad. I lost an inch on my waist and my pants are most definitely looser!

My husband lost 8 pounds this week and he's been cheating, so the sublingual drops obviously work! He's not hungry either. Lucky bugger!

What is the HCG Diet?

This post is for my friends who have asked for information about the HCG Diet. I am not a medical expert, nor a doctor. I am a simply girl who was looking for a permanent solution to obesity, and wanted to share what I've found. That's all. Any information I share will be based on direct observation and based on the book, Pounds & Inches, A New Approach to Obesity by A.T.W. Simeons, M.D.

First of all, after reading this post, to understand this diet and the principles behind it, I absolutely recommend reading Pounds & Inches. Download it here, or it is available for free all over the Internet and is about 35 pages. But, seriously, if you are thinking of doing this diet, read the book first. Do your homework and get the facts, then decide for yourself.

What is HCG?
HCG stands for Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin. HCG is a hormone which is exclusively produced in the placenta, from where it enters the mother's bloodstream.

Chorionic means of the chorion, which is part of the placenta.
Gonadotrophin is related to sex. However, HCG is not a sex hormone and according to Dr. Simeons, is safe for both men and women.

According to Pounds & Inches, HCG can eliminate abnormal fat when used with a very specific protocol (detailed below is the 500 calorie diet). Though the diet is very low calorie, because of the HCG breaking down the abnormal fat, you burn between 1500-4000 calories a day, so you're not really hungry.

HCG Diet - More or less in simple terms

According to Dr. Simeons, there are three kinds of fat:
The first is structural fat which provides padding for our organs, keeping our skin smooth and taut, and provides a buffer for our bones (like on the bottom of our feet) so that when we walk, it is cushioned.

The second is normal reserve fat, which provides fuel that the body can draw when the nutrition from the normal digestive system is insufficient to meet the demand.

The third sucks. It's that abnormal fat that gets stored away for some far away, imagined "emergency" that it never quite gets to. This fat is locked away, but usually quite evident.

Here's what Dr. Simeons says about how the body addresses these fats:
"When an obese patient tries to reduce by starving himself, he will first lose his normal fat reserves. When these are exhausted he begins to burn up structural fat, and only as a last resort will the body yield its abnormal reserves, though by that time the patient usually feels so weak and hungry that the diet is abandoned. It is just for this reason that obese patients complain that when they diet they lose the wrong fat. They feel famished and tired and their face becomes drawn and haggard, but their belly, hips, thighs and upper arms show little improvement. The fat they have come to detest stays on and the fat they need to cover their bones gets less and less. Their skin wrinkles and they look old and miserable. And that is one of the most frustrating and depressing experiences a human being can have."

If you've dieted at all like I have, the above statement is pretty real. This is the primary reason I chose to do the HCG Diet Protocol personally. To think that this diet actually addresses that hard to lose fat?? for good?? Sign me up!

Okay, so that's an overview of what HCG is and what it's doing in this protocol. Now, a quick orientation, because there is a lot of information on line, and some of it does not match up.

Spreading the HCG Word:
More than 60 years ago Dr. Simeons developed a specific protocol for handling obesity. His manuscript is the result of more than 40 years of hands on clinical research, and it was published sometime in the early 1950's. So his protocol has stood the test of time.

Now, a little while back Kevin Trudeau wrote a book and featured this diet with some additions and modifications. This popularized it in a new unit of time for a whole new generation. I'll be honest, I have not read it and I'm not that familiar with it.

I am personally doing the strictly Dr. Simeons, Pounds & Inches HCG Diet protocol. The decision to follow it to the tee is based on the fact that Dr. Simeons is very specific on why the protocol is to be followed precisely, and he claims that when followed, it can eliminate obesity. There are more technical aspects to this, so I refer you again to the book, Pound & Inches. So that is why I have chosen to do his protocol.

HCG Protocol (abridged version):

HCG Injections (read the whole post before panicking please, they really do NOT hurt.)

For less than 15 pounds: 26 Days. 23 Days of injections, plus 3 days of low calorie diet.
More than 15 pounds: 43 Days. 40 Days of injections, plus 3 additional days of low calorie.

Here's how that works out:

Day 1 & 2: HCG Injections (not so fun). Load days (fun). Aka gorge days. Yep, just like it sounds. Eat lots of fattening foods for two days. These days are with injections and allows the HCG to get into the bloodstream while adding some volume of "normal reserve fat" (which will be burned your first days on the very low calorie portion of the diet).

Okay, the load days are a big deal. In fact, here's what Dr. Simeons says:
"It is usually at this point that a difference appears between those patients who have literally eaten to capacity during the first two days of treatment and those who have not. The former feel remarkably well; they have no hunger, nor do they feel tempted when others eat normally at the same table. They feel lighter, more clearheaded and notice a desire to move quite contrary to their previous lethargy. Those who have disregarded the advice to eat to capacity continue to have minor discomforts and do not have the same euphoric sense of well being until about a week later. It seems that their normal fat reserves require that much more time before they are fully stocked."

Days 3-23: Injections plus 500 calorie Diet as prescribed by Dr. Simeons:

The 500 Calorie Diet
"The 500 calorie diet is explained on the day of the second injection to those patients who will be preparing their own food, and it is most important that the person who will actually cook is present - the wife, the mother or the cook, as the case may be. Here in Italy patients are given the following diet sheet.

• Breakfast: Tea or coffee in any quantity without sugar. Only one tablespoonful of milk allowed in 24 hours. Saccharin or Stevia may be used.
  

• Lunch:
  1. 100 grams of veal, beef, chicken breast, fresh whitefish, lobster, crab, or shrimp. All visible fat must be carefully removed before cooking, and the meat must be weighed raw. It must be boiled or grilled without additional fat. Salmon, eel, tuna, herring, dried or pickled fish are not allowed. The chicken breast must be removed from the bird.
  2. One type of vegetable only to be chosen from the following: spinach, chard, chicory, beet-greens, green salad, tomatoes, celery, fennel, onions, red radishes, cucumbers, asparagus, cabbage.
  3. One breadstick (grissino) or one Melba toast.
  4. An apple or a handful of strawberries, an orange, or one-half grapefruit.
• Dinner: The same four choices as lunch.
  

The juice of one lemon daily is allowed for all purposes. Salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard powder, garlic, sweet basil, parsley, thyme, marjoram, etc., may be used for seasoning, but no oil, butter or dressing.

Tea, coffee, plain water, or mineral water are the only drinks allowed, but they may be taken in any quantity and at all times. In fact, the patient should drink about 2 liters of these fluids per day. Many patients are afraid to drink so much because they fear that this may make them retain more water. This is a wrong notion as the body is more inclined to store water when the intake falls below its normal requirements.

The fruit or the breadstick may be eaten between meals instead of with lunch or dinner, but not more than than four items listed for lunch and dinner may be eaten at one meal.

No medicines or cosmetics other than lipstick, eyebrow pencil and powder may he used without special permission.

Days 24-26: No injection, but continue 500 Calorie Diet. (To allow the HCG to fully leave the bloodstream before increasing calories. This is explained in the book)

Day 27 and next three weeks: No sugar or starches.

After the Diet - Go ahead, eat whatever you want...or not.
According to Dr. Simeons, once you have completed the full protocol, you can resume eating whatever you want and you should not regain the weight. HOWEVER, I would like to put in my own thoughts on this: When Dr. Simeons wrote and prescribed Pounds & Inches, it was the late 40's, early 50's. Most meals were still eaten in the home and were comprised of lots of fresh foods. He DID NOT have BK, or Micky Ds, or (shudder) some other fast food, low nutrient, high calorie, sorry-ass excuse for a meal readily available! He did not expect that we would live in a culture of delivery pizzas, donut shops, and high calorie/sugary coffee drink stands on every corner. In fact, I'm sure he would have had a whole other section on that if he thought it was an issue.

I say this emphatically because in perusing the net for info on the HCG diet, I have found people complaining that they can't eat the way they used to (tons of junk food) without the pounds creeping back. Really???!!!

So, after this diet, the reality is that each of us will have to take responsibility for long-term health and NOURISHING the body. The weight will stay off if that happens. I'm personally going back to Eat to Live and have no doubts that this is the last time I will have to worry about my weight.

Okay, so what if you have to do another round because you didn't lose all the weight?

After the three weeks of no sugar and no starches, you would have to wait another three weeks before doing a 2nd round. Then you would do the same as outlined above.

If a third round is required, then it would be an eight week break before the third round.

This is explained in detail in the book. I hope this explained a lot. If you're still interested, then read the book. Please ;-)

By the way, if you don't want to do the injections, there are also sublingual (under the tongue) drops. My husband is doing that version because he's afraid of needles. Seems to be just as effective.

New Year - New Diet

So, if you've been following my blog, you know that I've been following Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Furhman (mostly anyway). This is still the most satisfying way I have ever found to eat. I tend to follow it strictly during the week, then we would eat out and I would stray a little. The advantage was that in a year, I managed to maintain my weight steadily. Even if I gained a couple pounds on a weekend with a couple different meal-related events, I would take it back off by Wednesday. This is important for me because it means that if I could get down to an ideal body weight, then I could stably maintain quite easily on Eat to Live. I know this without question.

So here's what happened in my diet world: I decided that I was going to go for broke and follow strictly Dr. Furhman's 6 week plan, and then stay on the diet strictly until I am closer to my ideal weight. Good plan. However, due to a number of events, I got distracted and chose a different course for the rapid weight loss and ideal weight goal attainment. I DO PLAN TO FOLLOW EAT TO LIVE FOR LIFE THOUGH.

I will explain:
So, I'm on Facebook and I see a friend of mine posting various weight loss status updates and he's doing some diet called HCG. I don't pay it any attention as I have no need for fad or dangerous diets at my age, thank you. He loses 27 pounds in 23 days. Not bad, but I'm still unimpressed.

Then, I'm walking downtown and I pass a girl friend I haven't seen for a while and she looks amazing. She's slim and tight looking and if I didn't know better, I'd say she has a personal trainer and been on a strict diet. Lastly, she looks healthy! I'm intrigued and I stop her and ask her what she's been doing. She smiles and says, "HCG. I've lost 50 pounds and I feel awesome." Sadly I have to be somewhere in 2 minutes, so I can't really talk, but I am dumbfounded. I've seen a lot of diets and often I've seen people lose a lot of weight, but they look emaciated and unhealthy. I want to be thinner, but I still want to look good!

I can't stop thinking about my friend all through my daily activities, so I call her as soon as I can, which is around 6:00ish. I grill her about exercise, and she says she's done none. I grill her on the diet and she says it's the easiest diet she's ever done. She started the diet at the end of August last year and lost 35 pounds her first round, and another 15 the second round. Wow.

The moment I get home, I Google "Pounds and Inches book" and find a manuscript that looks unadulterated and I read it that night. I'm completely intrigued and I decide that this is absolutely the diet I need to cure my obesity once and for all.

So begins the beginning of my journey on the last diet I will ever do.

Two Years and I'm Still a Non-Smoker

It's hard to believe it's only been two years since we quit smoking. It feels like much longer, despite the fact that I smoked for more than 20 years, too.

I was thinking about that the other day when a friend asked about "that book I read to quit smoking". I happily told him to pick up "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking" by Allen Carr (I hope I spelled all that right, though I doubt there is another guy with a similar name that wrote a book about stopping smoking).

As I was saying...this made me think about what it was like when I smoked, and what it's like now (after a couple years being smoke-free). First of all, I still don't miss it. I don't have any insane cravings and I don't envy smokers at all. If anything, in this winter season I find myself shaking my head when I see some poor bloke standing outside in the drizzling, windy, cold - suffering just to "feed the beast". Meanwhile I'm warm and cozy and couldn't be bothered.

Last month, we had dinner with some friends. One of them is a smoker and actually excused himself during the dinner to slip outside for a quick smoke. Aside from the fact that it really isn't polite, I was stunned as I realized that he was actually a little embarrassed that he had to interrupt the social occasion because of his addiction. At that moment I remembered that I had felt that way myself many times as a smoker. I was again reminded that I wasn't missing a thing.

What it's like now.
I love that I can sit inside on a day when the weather is inclement, or sit inside and snuggle down with a book for hours uninterrupted! I love that my car still smells NEW and my clothes smell like nothing. My mother also quit a couple years ago, and one thing that is really obvious now is that at family gatherings, the whole family stays together longer. Before, when a few of us smoked, we would sneak off after tea or dinner and have a smoke, or two, or three...leaving the family indoors (especially when the weather was less than pleasant), and essentially cutting the family time short. Now the family stays together and there is no nervous agitation to step out.

Sadly now there are even more reasons to quit, like the fact that the crappy, cheap brand costs almost $4.00 a pack now. We used to smoke American Spirit (the natural brand) and they're up to $6.00+ a pack. Wow. I don't think so. I can think of a lot better things to spend my money on, thanks. A friend of mine quit 6 months ago and put the money she would have spent each day on cigarettes in a jar. She bought a new laptop a couple months ago. =)

And now the domestic cigarettes have a flame retardant in the actual cigarette itself (as if they weren't toxic enough before!). Yeeeaaaah, this would be a good time to pick up that book if I were a smoker. Seriously.

Anyway, I thought I'd update since it's been a couple years in case you were wondering if I was still a non-smoker. I'm happy to report that I am and expect I'll continue to be. The air is so much clearer from where I'm sitting now.

Wow. It has been a WHILE.

Sorry it has been soooooo long. I was actually a bit surprised to see that my last post was in July. So much has happened, I wouldn't know where to begin.

Well, the bad news is that I've still been half assing (is that really a word??) the Eat to Live diet. The holidays were off the rails and this new year has been a series of out of town trips and LOTS of eating out, soooooooo I've gained 3 pounds since last July. The good news is that because I have eaten a lot of good foods over all this time, I haven't gained back the weight I lost while following Eat to Live more fully. This is exciting to me because it likely means that once I actually lose all my excess weight, it will stay gone!

Last Sunday we actually had the opportunity to see Dr. Fuhrman live. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I found his presentation useful, interesting and entertaining. First thing Monday we started and I've already lost 2 pounds. This time I am committed. You'll see.

Been a while...

It's been a couple months since I last blogged. I kind of got caught up with my wedding and then our mini honeymoon, then the next thing you know, I got caught up with life in general. I've been meaning to blog recently, but as with all things important, you actually have to make some time for it. Though that's not quite true. You just gotta take the time to do it.

Anyway, just to catch you up on the latest...

Ever since the wedding, I have been eating mostly per Eat to Live, but with a lot of deviations (aka cheating). The bad news is that I haven't really lost much as a result. The good news is that I haven't really gained either. Usually in the past if I went off the rails on my diet, I would gain back everything I lost and then some. It's been a couple months and I have been holding steady.

We also went back to the gym on Monday and we are following the Fitness for Life workout plan (from the Body for Life book). We're still following more or less Eat to Live, but the workouts are from BFL. This morning we are weight training upper body. I am pretty sore all over at this point because we have worked out every day this week, and before that I was sitting on my lazy ass doing nothing. Though I am sore, it's a good sore.

Last night I re-read the chapter on the Eat to Live 6 week plan. Grant and I are going to follow it fully starting on Monday. In the meantime we will continue to workout.

Other news: Our "wedding" was a huge success! Everything was perfect and it was an awesome day! We went off to St. Augustine for the week after, and as usual, it was sublime!

After we got back, we discovered that our younger daughter had gotten engaged. Wow. More on that later as well.

Now that you are all caught up, I'm off to the gym this morning for upper body strength training.

lost 3 more pounds this week

Happy Sunday!

Sorry I have been remiss in updating my blog the past few days. I have been rather preoccupied with my anniversary wedding event which takes place a week from yesterday. My house is still in the midst of some construction happenings and currently looks like it exploded inside. I have a lot to do, but I feel strangely calm.

Anyway, I weighed myself this morning and was thrilled to see that I have lost more than 3 pounds this week. Last Thursday I started the morning by weighing myself. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had lost a little over a pound from my weight the day before. I was even more surprised to see that this occurred despite the fact that I started my cycle that same morning. Normally this time of the month, I gain a few pounds just in water retention weight. So, not only did I not gain, but I even lost some. Over the past couple days I continued to lose weight despite the fact that I'm dealing with "that time of the month" as well. Amazing.

Okay, so I do have a few things to note. First of all, this way of life is becoming more comfortable as I move along with it. I actually look forward to eating healthy, wholesome meals each day. I have by no means been perfect either, but I do find that the closer I follow the program, the more weight I lose.

Second, I was surprised to start my period when I did because that would put me right at about 28 days, and my cycle has been irregular for quite some time. I actually expected it next week sometime around my "wedding", so I am quite pleased that it came now. I also find that I'm not as moody or bitchy, especially considering the stress factor I have been dealing with on getting my home ready for about 100 of my closest and oldest friends and family. Some of which are flying in from other parts of the country to participate in the festivities.

Speaking of which, I went shopping a couple of days ago for my "wedding" outfit, and I tried on all these tops in XL, but one for one, they were too big! This is huge for me. I can now wear a large top comfortably! I had found just prior to starting Eat to Live that all my clothes felt too snug and I felt constricted in everything, but now my clothes fit comfortably! Anyway, I like the changes that my body is experiencing, and will continue to note them as I go along.

In the meantime my husband has continued to lose weight consistently and, as he puts it, "easily". He's lost 15 pounds so far and all of his pants are practically falling off. In fact, we have these white linen pants he's supposed to wear for the "wedding", but they are a bit too big for him now. By next week, they will most likely be way too big. So, off to the mall we go.